Oh for fuck's sake. My heart sinks when someone posts a link to an article, you go to read it and after a few lines the text starts to fade out. You just know a "sign up to read the rest of this article" thing is going to scroll into view.
Fuck off with that shite.
@anomnomnomaly Underworld are still excellent.
So are Depeche Mode
@llamasoft_ox agreed. It should be full read or paywall. Teasers should be on request only.
Emotional friction of raising expectations and then breaking them, an externality to the publisher an irritant to the reader.
@llamasoft_ox or post gift links.
@llamasoft_ox paste the URL into the bottom box (you might need to remove any strings after the ?) https://archive.ph
@llamasoft_ox People should at least have the decency to mention a link leads to a paywall.
/me looking at a good number of Dutch journalists and columnists who always get very offended when people mention this to them
@llamasoft_ox If you are on mobile, I can recommend using Firefox Android (obviously, you need an Android device) and the addon Bypass Paywall Clean. It won't always work, but it's pretty comprehensive.
@llamasoft_ox
I don’t read enough of any single newspaper to justify a subscription. I wouldn’t mind paying a fee to have access to multiple news papers.
@llamasoft_ox Twinned with "we notice you're using an adblocker... disable it to continue reading"
@TTDog666 @llamasoft_ox "I've noticed you're a piece of shit, and that's why I have an ad blocker!"
@llamasoft_ox There is also "reader mode" in firefox, the little icon on the right of the search bar. It gets rid of most popups for me
@llamasoft_ox most paywalls are Javascript based. If you just disable JS temporarily, they don't kick in and you get the full article
Hit F12 in most browsers for the dev console, then tap into the settings within that (usually a cog icon in the upper right), and there'll be a "disable javascript" option there.
@dev_ric @llamasoft_ox And you can do it per site, permanently... But still a waste of time for one article.
@llamasoft_ox some sites give you the article a few seconds. I do control-a, control-c and then paste into notepad, problem solved.
i hope websites can tell, despite the various blockers in my browser, whenever I just hit the back button after I get halfway down the article and see the forced account creation prompt.
That is what I do every time. There is nothing special enough about any article that will get me to create an account to read it.
@RaePatterson @llamasoft_ox Nah, Marketing wouldn't mention that in their quarterly reports.
@llamasoft_ox copy the URL and check whether a readable version has been deposited with the WaybackMachine.
@llamasoft_ox Suspect that's only gonna get worse from here for a while as everyone tries to track their readers more closely to make sure they're not AI training robots.
@llamasoft_ox yeah, that really sucks.
@llamasoft_ox I have https://archive.is bookmarked for stuff like this. It can get by most of the silly "sign up" or "pay up" walls. Hope this helps!